Image source @ Visual China
Wen | Feng traveled
A few days ago, Luo Baojun, general manager of Xiaomi Jingjin Branch, said in response to domestic media that in the Q3 quarter of this year, Xiaomi Automobile's engineering prototype car will meet with everyone, and at the same time said that the new car will break through everyone's imagination. It is understood that the first model of Xiaomi car is positioned as a high-end model, priced at between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan, and it is expected to achieve mass production of the first car in 2024.
You know, the Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, who is known as "Rebbs", is the founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, who is the founder of Apple, and the Apple founded by Jobs began to establish the "Titan" project in 2014 and officially entered the field of smart cars. However, not long ago, Apple's car-making team was revealed to have long been disbanded.
Compared with Apple's tortuous car-making process, Xiaomi, which officially announced its entry into the smart electric vehicle industry since March 30 last year, if it can launch the first engineering prototype car as scheduled in the third quarter of this year and achieve the mass production and listing of the first mass-produced car in 2024, then its speed of car-making is somewhat outrageous.
Although Lei Jun was inspired by "Silicon Valley Fire" to have a later Jinshan resume and the current Xiaomi company, the construction process of Xiaomi Cars is completely different from Apple's "Titan" plan.
Idol failure, millet can succeed?
Apple can build a "Titan" team of up to thousands of people in a short period of time in order to build a car, while Xiaomi Automobile's initial capital is only 10 billion yuan, and its team size has reached 1,000 people nearly a year after the establishment of the project. Compared with Apple, which has strong strength and deep wealth, Xiaomi Cars is a bit small.
It is worth mentioning that although Apple is a technology giant, it has no actual manufacturing experience, so it can only find car companies all over the world to find OEM for it when building cars. So why does Xiaomi, which has only invested 10 billion yuan in the early stage and only invested $10 billion in 10 years, build its own car?
In Xiao Lei's view, the main reason why Apple's "Titan" plan will die before it is successful is neither that Apple has given enough money, nor because Apple's scientific and technological strength is not strong enough. On the contrary, it is precisely because Apple thinks too much that its car-building plan is declared bankrupt.
Xiao Lei's "thinking too much" here has three meanings:
First, As a well-deserved technology giant in the world, Apple's auto projects have been bound by high-end technology brands since the beginning of the project. In fact, Apple has never released information about the "Titan" project-related products, and most of the rumors about Apple cars come from the speculation of the melon-eating masses.
According to Apple's expectations, Apple cars will be available in 2025. According to speculation from the outside world, Apple wants to build a highly intelligent driverless car without a steering wheel and acceleration and deceleration pedals. However, driverless cars of this size in 2025 will not be able to drive on the road at all. Therefore, in Xiao Lei's view, car consumers have too high expectations for it, and it is consumers who kill Apple cars that have not yet had time to come out.
Second, Apple has thought too much about how to enter the automotive field, and its decisions in the 8 years of entering the automotive field have been erratic, and it has been repeatedly jumping between vehicle manufacturing and automatic driving. Admittedly, Apple has a lot of money, it can afford to burn this money, but it missed the best time to enter the automotive field, and it also led to the dispersion of people inside the Titan project and the frequent departure of executives.
Third, Apple hopes to use the OEM model to build cars, but it is too picky about the requirements of its desired OEM partners. Or rather, Apple doesn't want to find a partner to work with, it just wants to find a high standard, strict demand to find a worker who can screw it, and its arrogant attitude causes no one to cooperate with it.
In Xiao Lei's view, rather than Apple's failure to build cars, it is better to say that its road to car building has never officially begun. Xiaomi Car, unlike Apple, has been making smooth progress so far because it knows exactly what kind of product it wants to make.
As early as Last April, within a month of Xiaomi announcing the car, Lei Jun launched 3 rounds of voting to fans through Weibo:
1. What car do you want Xiaomi Car to be?
2. Regarding the brand of Xiaomi Car, do you use the "Xiaomi" brand or take a new brand?
3. What do you want the first car of Xiaomi Car to cost?
Although in these three rounds of voting, fans have the highest demand for models under 100,000 yuan, but because this price point is not in line with Xiaomi's brand strategy, Xiaomi decided to make a model closest to this positioning. Lei Jun said that the first Millet car is positioned in the middle and high-end, and the price range is 100,000-300,000 yuan.
In addition, according to informed sources, between 100,000 and 300,000 yuan in Lei Jun's mouth actually covers 4 models, of which two are A+ class and B class. The price of the A+ class car in the middle range is 150,000-200,000 yuan, and it may be equipped with L2+ automatic driving in the future, and the price of the high-end B-class car is between 200,000 and 300,000 yuan, and the future will be equipped with L3 level automatic driving technology.
For Xiaomi Automobile, as a startup or a brand new project, it is very important to clearly know what kind of product it wants to make, which will make it take a lot of detours in the development process. In addition, the product positioning of 100,000-300,000 yuan is more grounded, and products without too high sci-fi color are naturally easier to achieve when mass production.
On the other hand, unlike Apple Cars, which wholeheartedly seek OEM, Xiaomi has chosen a more difficult car-building model. Compared with looking for a third-party OEM, self-built factories can not only control the risks in the automobile production process in their own hands, but also eliminate the time of negotiation with the OEM and technology integration.
The potential crisis of Xiaomi cars
There is an old saying on the mainland called "misfortune depends on blessings, and blessings and misfortunes lie down." In Xiao Lei's view, the hidden dangers in the development process of Xiaomi cars in the future are also hidden in these advantages.
From the current point of view, Xiaomi has entered the automotive industry with a lower body and a civilian positioning, making its products easier to mass-produce, but it also means that its products do not have too strong competitiveness. From the current point of view, the biggest advantage of Xiaomi Car is that the Xiaomi brand has a huge fan base and a strong brand appeal in the field of science and technology.
However, the price range technology of 100,000-300,000 yuan is a must for all traditional car companies and new car manufacturers. Under the premise of not having enough excellent product strength as a support, the brand influence obtained across the border is not enough to support the sales of a model, and the Xilis SF5, which even Huawei could not support at that time, is a typical case.
According to the data of the Association of Passenger Vehicles, although the price segment structure of the passenger car market in mainland cities continues to rise, and the sales of high-end models have increased significantly, the models in the price range of 80,000-250,000 yuan still occupy more than 70% of the sales volume of the new energy vehicle market in the mainland in 2021. This also means that the competition in the price range of 80,000-250,000 yuan will be quite fierce. In addition, at present, whether it is high-end transformation of car companies, or civilian transformation of car companies are launching an attack on this price segment.
In terms of high-end, Great Wall Motor's new energy vehicle brand Euler is a typical case, it has "temporarily" stopped production of black cat, white cat two low-end models, and comprehensively launched a transformation to more than 100,000 high-end electric vehicle market. In terms of civilianization, Tesla Model 3 and Model Y have also been attacking the market below 300,000 yuan, hoping to win a larger market at a price.
Obviously, the 8-25 million yuan price range of cars accounted for 70% of the country's automobile market share, and as more and more car companies compete in this price range, and Xiaomi Car, the main 100,000-300,000 yuan class car companies will only be more and more, and these car companies will be the most direct competitors of Xiaomi Car. In the face of many powerful and experienced opponents, it is still unknown whether Xiaomi Cars can break through the siege.
On the other hand, although Xiaomi Automobile has avoided the dilemma of Apple's repeated encounters in OEM by building its own factory and building its own car, it has no experience in building cars. In Xiao Lei's view, this is likely to lay hidden dangers for future product design and quality problems, which will be a fatal blow to a start-up.
Since the automobile industry is a well-known asset-heavy industry, the new entrants lack automobile manufacturing experience and are not familiar with the process of automobile research and development, but in order to enhance competitiveness, a large number of innovative technologies have been used in the research and development and production process. Therefore, the products of the new car-making forces are prone to leave a variety of hidden dangers in the process of research and development, and Xiaomi Automobile, which lacks automobile manufacturing experience, is difficult to completely avoid such a situation.
Of course, inexperience is not irreparable. As a latecomer in the field of new energy vehicles, Xiaomi can learn from its predecessors the experience of failure, and even wave a hoe to dig the corners of "predecessor" car companies.
For example, on September 7, 2021, Hu Zhengnan, the former president of Geely Research Institute, who was once called "the key gentleman of Geely Car" by the media, joined Shunwei Capital. According to the data, Shunwei Capital is an investment company co-founded by Lei Jun, while Hu Zhengnan has nearly 25 years of relevant experience in the field of automotive product development and R&D management, and is responsible for developing geely Group's proud SEA haohan structure.
The reason why Hu Zhengnan did not directly enter Xiaomi Automobile may be because it avoided conflicts with the "non-compete agreement" signed by Geely, and this personnel change of Shunwei Capital about Hu Zhengnan is regarded by the outside world as Xiaomi Automobile ushering in the first big man in the car circle.
Obviously, Xiaomi Automobile has no experience in building cars, so it needs to find more professional people to coordinate this extremely test of school professional ability. It is foreseeable that more automotive professionals may join Xiaomi Automobile in the future. You know, although Xiaomi wants to build a smart car, but the smart car itself is also a car, only the more people in the team understand the car, in order to avoid the risk of car manufacturing experience as much as possible for it.